Poster dog's rehab tale brings group 25K award

By THERESA HOGUE

Gazette-Times reporter

Susan Faria still can't quite believe her luck.

In the past 10 years, Senior Dog Rescue of Oregon has helped hundreds of elderly and injured dogs find new homes and loving owners.

What's more, it has accomplished its good work on a donated, shoe-string budget, with the help of dedicated volunteers and foster families.

But on Tuesday, Faria learned that the Philomath-based organization had received a $25,000 windfall. The benefactor was Maddie's Fund, a national foundation that supports animal welfare and promotes groups that find homes for hard-to-place animals.

"You don't know how excited we are," Faria said Wednesday.

Faria, a veterinary assistant, began the organization in 1997, after she watched a family put their elderly dog down because they couldn't afford his medical bills. For the first six years, she struggled to finance the fostering, medical bills and adoption of a number of elder dogs. Then, in 2005, the organization gained nonprofit status and began to collect donations, and volunteers began helping take in and care for senior dogs.

Last year, three of Faria's volunteers, Ange Crawford, Judy Riggs and Barbara Spreadbury, heard about the Maddie's Fund marketing competition. It asked groups to share the marketing campaigns that they used to find homes for hard-to-place animals. The women submitted an entry detailing Senior Dog Rescue's recent campaign promoting Eddie, a severely injured rescue dog whose story inspired an outpouring of community support.

Eddie is a 5-year-old Lhasa Apso-poodle mix whose injuries and subsequent surgeries were chronicled in the Gazette-Times in 2006-07. He was rescued from a filthy cage in a Mulino home and taken to Senior Dog Rescue, where he was diagnosed with a severe leg deformity. He hardly could walk, and shuffled painfully along. But he was nonetheless a friendly dog, with a talent for winning friends.

Contributions poured in for Eddie. They helped to defray the cost of two expensive surgeries at the Oregon State University School of Veterinary Medicine. Now Eddie can walk - even run - with ease.

The heartwarming story made Eddie the poster dog for Senior Dog Rescue. He became the star attraction at fundraisers and public events.

Awareness about the plight of other dogs such as Eddie is crucial to the organization, Faria said. Shelters and pet owners call two to three times a day looking for somewhere to place older dogs. Often, the dogs come with health and dental problems, which Senior Dog Rescue has to address before putting the animals up for adoption.

Faria has to limit the numbers of animals her organization can accept, because of the limited number of families willing to foster the dogs. Many of her foster volunteers have to take two or three dogs at once until homes are found.

The amount of money the group has received is astonishing, Faria said.

"We're still trying to get used to the idea," she said.

They'd hoped for $2,000 at most. Now, board members must sit down and discuss how to use the $25,000. The money's immediate purpose is to pay for dental procedures and orthopedic surgery for some of the current foster dogs, but that's not all. They hope to expand their adoption network, show dogs at retirement facilities and increase the number of foster homes, among other things.

"We have never - in 10 years of operation - had this much money at once," Faria said. "This will allow us to help a lot more dogs."

Lynn Spivak, communiations director for Maddie's Fund, said Senior Dog Rescue's deft use of Eddie as a poster-dog fit in well with the foundation's mission to save animals from being euthanized.

"We were impressed with the way they brought public awareness to the plight of seemingly unadoptable animals," she said.

Next week, the organization will receive yet another boost, when a crew from NBC Nightly News arrives to do a story about their work.

"We're quite excited about this," Faria said.